Hollywood Reporter Editor Stirs Controversy -- Again.

As long as they've existed, the Hollywood trade papers generally have maintained chummy relations with the major studios. But somebody seems to have forgotten to tell Anita Busch, the brash editor of the Hollywood Reporter.

In the latest chapter of an ongoing series of clashes between the 38-year-old journalist and the Hollywood studios, Busch wrote a scathingly critical column about the violence in the recently released 20th Century Fox Film Corp. movie "Fight Club." This led to reports, none of them confirmed by the principals, that Fox had decided to pull its ads.

From a financial standpoint, this would have been a very big deal for the 70-year-old Reporter, which relies heavily on studio advertising. Over the years, studios have occasionally threatened to pull their ads as the ultimate economic leverage. But tensions typically lessen in short order because, in the end, both sides need each other: the trades for the ads and the studios for the coverage.

The brouhaha over Busch, however, is especially striking because she manages the newsroom -- and presumably would be aware of any sensitivity over advertising.

In her Oct. 12 column, which ran just days before "Fight Club" was released, Busch wrote that "the film is exactly the kind of product that lawmakers should target for being socially irresponsible in a nation that has deteriorated to the point of Columbine," referring to the Colorado high school massacre.

While Fox denied that it ever pulled any advertising from the Reporter -- and indeed a Fox ad appeared a week ago -- no one was willing to talk about the matter last week. But advertising boycott or no, Busch's column clearly caused friction. In its opening weekend, the film received generally poor reviews and tepid box-office results.

A publicist for the paper said that neither Busch nor Publisher Robert Dowling would comment for this story.

When rumors began flying that Fox had indefinitely pulled all its advertising from the trade publication, no one was surprised. It wouldn't be the first time Busch has triggered an advertising boycott -- and over the same issue of film violence.

As a reporter at the Reporter in 1992, she wrote a critical article about Paramount Pictures' "Juice," a movie dealing with Harlem teenagers. Busch criticized the studio's advertising campaign, which included posters of youths holding guns. Some people feared, she wrote, that the posters would lead to violence around the movie theaters.

Paramount pulled its advertising in the trade paper and stopped sending press releases for an entire year.

"Then it was Oscar season and all of a sudden they needed us again," said Alex Ben Block, former editor of the Reporter who left last year and recommended that Busch take his place.

"Wherever she goes, the news goes with her," said Block, now editor in chief and vice president of eStar.com, a celebrity Web site slated to launch next month. "Anita is very professional and very thorough. If you were talking about dating, there are some women who are easy and there are some women who are a challenge. Anita is a real challenge."

When a vacancy opened up on the Reporter's film beat Block thought after Busch's arrival from the Midwest, Block thought she would be a natural. At first, she was hesitant. But then she learned the ins and outs of the movie world and wrote some good articles, Block said.

"She jumped into the fray and became everything I ever hoped in developing sources and breaking stories," he said. "Nobody worked harder than Anita."

Busch left the Reporter in the mid-1990s to work for its rival, Variety. There, she came up with some good stories, according to various sources, but was known to leave a trail of angry people in her wake.

"She was discourteous to news sources," said one industry insider. "She had fights with editors. She was a lot f trouble and high maintenance."

Former colleagues say she had an incredible list of inside sources who fed her good tips. But she was known t go with those tips without confirming them.

"If she heard rumors and was convinced something was happening, she ran with it. And 50 percent of the time she was wrong," said Dan Cox, a former film writer at Variety who worked with Busch before he left to become a talent agent with Broder, Kurland, Webb, Uffner.

Busch left Variety in 1997 when, according to various accounts, she disagreed about the handling of a story written by another reporter. The story was about the firing of Mike Marcus, former president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He read about his demise in the paper and was never contacted for comment. Busch claimed that was because of an arrangement between Variety Editor Peter Bart and MGM chief Frank Mancuso; Bart claimed afterward that Busch's story was untrue, and he had told the reporter to call Marcus the night before the issue was released.

For a while after leaving Variety, Busch did freelance magazine pieces. Then she was tapped early this year to be editor of the Reporter.

Busch, known for her workaholic ways, is determined that the No. 2 Hollywood Reporter, owned by Billboard Publications Inc., will beat nut its bigger rival Variety, owned by Cahners Business Information.

It's far too early to tell how she will fare. For the six months ended March 31, the Reporter's daily circulation was 23,915, down slightly from 24,584 the previous year. Variety's circulation during the same period was 35,814, up from 27,929. But Variety's jump came about because it started up a New York edition a year ago, and the March figures for Hollywood Reporter came too soon after her arrival to say much about Busch's performance.